Friday, March 15, 2013

New Lync Online Hybrid Scenarios

Introduction
Lync Hybrid is something that comes up a lot with customers Office 365 customers. With Lync in particular there are many different types of hybrids that can be supported which provides our enterprise customers many options and a lot of flexibility. Now with the new version of Lync Online and Lync 2013, we even have more flexibility.

In this blog I am going to discuss what options you have available and provide you some good resources.

Lync Hybrid
Lync Hybrid is a solution architecture that allows an organization to have Lync 2013 on-premise run in Hybrid with Lync Online. Lync Hybrid is a scenario that was supported in the old cloud Lync Online service but there were limitations. The big limitation was that Lync users on-premise had to be on a different domain than the users who were on Lync Online. This limitation is now removed with Lync 2013. This is no longer an issue and it is now possible to have Lync users on-premise and on Lync Online share the same domain.
Here are some important facts:
  • A user must either be provisioned on Lync on-premise or Lync Online. A user cannot be provisioned to use services in both places.
  • You must have ADFS Federation and have Lync 2013 installed on-premise.
  • This only works with the new Lync Online service (i.e. if your tenant has not been upgraded to Lync 2013 in the cloud, you will need to wait for that to complete).
  • It is possible to have Lync Online run in hybrid with OCS R2 or Lync 2010 deployed on-premise. For OCS R2 you will need a Lync 2013 Edge Server deployed on-premise. If you have Lync 2010 farm on-premise, your Lync 2010 Edge Server must have the latest cumulative updates but it would be recommended to have a Lync 2013 Edge Server on-premise.
  • Good logistical note is that Lync client policies will have to be managed in Lync on-premise and Lync Online separately.
For planning information, please review the following for additional important details - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj205403.aspx

Additionally, here is a configuration guide - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj205237.aspx. There are basically to basic steps. First you will configure federation from on-premise Lync to Lync Online. Second there are a set of commands that you will use to move users from on-premise Lync to Lync Online.

When you move users from on-premise to the cloud, remember that if the user has more than 250 pinned contacts they will not all be moved up and meetings scheduled in the future with Lync must be rescheduled.

Lync Hybrid with Other Services
This has been something that has been supported for some time. It is possible to have several permutations of how you can have (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj822170.aspx). For instance:
  • Lync Online can work with Exchange on-premise and SharePoint on-premise.
  • Lync on-premise can work with Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.
There is a really good table (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj945633.aspx) that outlines all the permutations of features and capabilities that are enabled based on the combination that you select with Lync, Exchange and SharePoint regardless of where they are deployed.

Additionally it is possible to have Lync On-Premise that is being used for Enterprise Voice (PBX) to be integrated with the Exchange Online Unified Messaging capability (i.e. be able to listen to your voice mail through Outlook / OWA in Exchange Online). Please review this - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj819288.aspx. Side Note, it is also possible to have Exchange Online Unified Messaging work with other non-Lync PBX solutions.

Finally sometimes people even consider Lync Federation a form of hybrid. Lync Federation is more about having your Lync Online service connect to other organizations. For more information, please review this - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj822168.aspx.

Conclusion
As you can see there is an immense amount of flexibility organizations have with their deployment of Lync and Office 365. This allows organizations to meet complex requirements and transition to the cloud on their terms.

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